Parents Defend Disturbing Video of Them Using Hot Sauce to Punish Son for Potty Training Accident

Earlier this week, a disturbing video surfaced that shows a man using hot sauce to punish a child after a supposed potty training accident. The sickening video spread quickly, causing an outcry of anger from many parents online. With police investigating and people demanding consequences, the parents of the child are insisting that their actions were neither abusive nor wrong.

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The video, which originated on Snapchat, is captioned "Potty Training 101." In the footage, a man picks up a small child, holds him upside down, and picks up a bottle of hot sauce. The man then pours some of the hot sauce down the child's pants before sitting him down on the floor and then rubbing some of the hot sauce on his face. It's truly disturbing to see.

KFOR reports the video first began making the rounds after it was shared in a private Facebook group. Members of the group grew concerned for the child and decided to share it publicly. Shana Honeycutt of Edmond, Oklahoma, was one of the members who shared the video after coming across it in the private group. "As soon as I saw it, I was literally shaking and crying," she told KFOR. "I absolutely, 100 percent believe that putting hot sauce in your child's pants and wiping it on their face is absolutely child abuse."

Honeycutt was also able to identify the parents, telling the news outlet that they're from Choctaw, Oklahoma. "It needed to be public. It didn't need to be left in a private Facebook group where no one did or said anything about it," she told KWTV.

Some parents took to social media to express their disgust at the parents in the video.

KWTV spoke with a woman claiming to be the child's mother, who actually tried to defend the video. While she wished to remain anonymous, she said the video didn't show the whole story. “The video was played out to be something it wasn't," she said. The mother claims her son "loves" hot sauce and was laughing after the video was taken. “You can see that nothing went down his pants, and nothing was in his mouth," she said. "I would never put [my son] in harm's way."

On her Facebook account, Shana Honeycutt shared screenshots from a conversation with Seven Flores, whom she claims is the man in the video. In these screenshots, Flores can be seen defending his actions, stating that what he did to the child was "just a joke" and claiming that they had been trying to break the boy's thumb-sucking habit. He also mentions the same thing was done to him when he was a child.

Still, police paid a visit to the child's home, as did the Department of Human Services, who noted that the child appeared to be in a safe space.

Authorities are still looking into where the video was actually recorded, but in the meantime, the Department of Human Services' communications director, Sheree Powell, encouraged everyone to come forward with disturbing things they see on social media. "If something bothers you that much of what you're seeing, and you think it's important enough to share with your friends and family, you need to report it," she said, according to KWTV.

Shana Honeycutt says that while the parents involved may not believe what they did was wrong, their actions were incredibly harmful to their child. She told KFOR, "They both need some education on what is considered abuse and appropriate responses and how to potty train appropriately."